


One Week

by piecesofalice



Category: The Pretender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-02
Updated: 2010-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:35:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofalice/pseuds/piecesofalice





	One Week

**MONDAY**

  
She's two hours late, but no-one bats an eyelid. Legs for days,  
careening towards who-knows-what, and amplified by Manolo Blahniks  
across the tiled floor.

  
The moment seems to go on forever in their minds. In hers, it only  
takes a second before her and her busy mind smacks through the office  
door for another day of intelligent lies and substandard espionage.

  
She isn't surprised to see the box on her desk, untidy from travel and  
being handled by foreign hands. He hasn't put enough postage on it,  
and she knows it's because he'd given twenty bucks to some urchin to  
post it, only to have his good deed turned into a through way of cheap  
liquor and a couple of Big Macs.

  
Still, the box arrived, barely, and she turns it over in her hands.

  
_Don't open until Friday_, is written on the front in his  
handwriting, so she puts it in her bottom drawer to forget about it.

  
She doesn't.

  
**TUESDAY**

  
Her father is standing in front of her, half-heartedly trying to  
organise a dinner for Sunday night. She bites down on a curse word  
and, instead, tells a lie as smooth as Hessian but he's so desperate  
to escape, he pretends to believe her.

  
He leaves, and she wonders when their relationship turned from loving  
to nothing, from animate to inanimate, but she can't quite put her  
finger on it.

  
The cigarettes she's trying to quit are in the bottom drawer; if she  
doesn't have self-control then she won't have anything at all.

  
**WEDNESDAY**

  
They're following a lead that all three of them know is useless.

  
An aged man tells of Jarod like the second coming, how he turned his  
burden of a life upside down and owes him everything because.

  
She lights a cigarette that she bummed from some kid on the corner,  
and waves her hand at Broots to go back to the car while Sydney thanks  
the man for his time. He watches as she drags her feet back to their  
vehicle, back to The Centre.

  
"What? It's hump day," she spits at him, and they both know the burden  
of Sunday is hanging between them.

  
He leaves it, and she could kiss him for doing so.

  
**THURSDAY**

  
She gets through the day with illicit nicotine and a box of  
chocolates, by yelling at Broots and sneering at her brother through  
extremely thinly veiled disdain.

  
Later, she skips out early and runs past Sydney's questioning eyes,  
and dives into a bubble bath. She plays at being a normal, single  
female, and tries to ignore the excitement building over such a  
simple, tiny item that lies at the bottom of her disused contraband  
drawer.

  
Twelve to midnight, and it's all she can do to not climb in her car  
and rush to the office to open it the exact moment Thursday turns into  
Friday.

  
**FRIDAY**

  
The tiny origami bird nestled in tissue paper doesn't surprise her as  
much as her faceless secretary's shock at her being in at 6am.

  
She's angry at herself for the smile tickling at her mouth, as the  
bird unravels into a plane ticket with her name on it and the  
destination printed as "Tokyo".

  
"Fuck this," she breathes, and walks out of the office to hail a cab  
to the airport. She has two hours to hitch her plane, and only two  
hours to wonder why she's doing it in the first place.

  
**SATURDAY**

  
Tokyo is teeming with faces that look the same to her, but only  
because she's searching for one in particular.

  
"Miss Parker! Miss Parker!" A heavily accented voice is waving her  
down, and an excited young man dressed as a bellhop runs to her, unaware of her  
grasp of his language. "This way, this way!"

  
She's lead to a hotel lobby, nameless, faceless, and told to wait.  
"You much more beautiful than Jarod say," Hyoko (her escort's name  
being) says, before he bows and dances back to his post at the  
doorway. Occasionally, he grins at her and taps his watch and she  
again tries not to smile.

  
It's a strange ballet that continues for hours, as she progressively  
finds herself becoming crankier and crankier. Finally, Hyoko bounds  
towards her and points at the check-in desk. "You check in, Miss  
Parker, I finish work now."

  
She wants to run, to yell at this happy-go-lucky freak in his own  
language, to shock the grin off his face. But she doesn't, and she  
follows, and wonders why she's being so damn obedient when being so  
obviously fucked around.

  
The nasty little voice in the back of her mind whispers the answer  
she already knows. She chooses to ignore it, and instead, concentrates  
on checking in without saying a word.

  
He prattles to the receptionist for her and she's soon outside her room,  
trying to repress the hazardous anger growing inside her as she swings  
open the elaborate electronically locked door.

  
The room is swimming in rose light, as hundreds of origami cranes hang  
from every conceivable space to create a flock of beautifully coloured  
birds swimming through the air with the soft breeze flowing from the  
silent air conditioner.

  
She sits on the bed and stares, until eventually she falls asleep,  
dreaming of empty nests and the beauty of freedom.

  
**SUNDAY**

  
He's sitting across from her as she wakes, and no part of her is  
surprised. He smiles, and she smiles back, before he comes to her in  
the bed and neither of them can tell the other apart.

  
It's April, and it's been years, so many years since her mother died,  
that she finds it hard to remember the exact number or the exact way  
in which it happened. So many years of hurt and pain, of chasing paper  
cranes without bothering to gather them together to create the magical  
thousand in an attempt to bring herself latent happiness.

  
It doesn't matter, now, because he's seen what she needs before she  
even does. As they play in the sheets as a way of escape, they both  
know tomorrow they return to their respective roles of chaser and  
chased, but it doesn't spoil anything.

  
At the end of the week, another begins; like the years and months and days.

  
But at least for one day, as far away from her life as possible, she  
flies along side the crane instead of trying to harbor him and it  
tastes like freedom.

\---

_Fin._

\---


End file.
